The “getting started checklist”

To make sure you get the best results possible
for each campaign, carefully follow this checklist:

1. Permission

You must have subscriber-permission
to use Promothon.

Sending emails without permission will cause you to lose
your Promothon privileges. It doesn’t need to be complicated
though. As long as you can prove you've received permission
from everyone on your list, to contact them about the subject
you're sending, you're covered. Learn more in our basics
of permission article.

2. Design your promotion or email newsletter

Tell the recipient how you
got their detail

It’s so important to convey how you got someone’s
email address when you’re contacting them. Add a note
at the top of every template that clearly explains how you
obtained their email address. Also, to ensure compliancy
with the US CAN-SPAM laws, you need to include your street
address in every template you design for them.

Make it easy for them to unsubscribe

Every Promothon campaign must include an unsubscribe link,
but it’s very important not to hide the link in small
text at the bottom of your email. A prominent unsubscribe
link conveys trust to all recipients and shows you’re
serious about maintaining permission.

Link to a web version

If your recipient is using an older email client that has
problems displaying your email, they should always be provided
with a web-based version they can view in their browser.
You can do this with a single tag.

Ask to be added to their contact
list

Add a note to your template asking your recipients to add
your sending email address to their address book. Many ISP’s
allow your recipients to filter emails from unknown senders.
Plus, images are displayed by default if you’re in
the address book for many popular email clients.

Avoid excessive use of images

Many of today’s popular email clients block images
by default. Make sure any important content like headlines,
titles and calls to action are text based instead of image
based. We’ve written loads about this topic here.

Be smart with your CSS

Deciding whether or not to go for a CSS or table based template
depends on a few things, but most important of these is how
consistent you want your design to be in different email
clients. You can download great free templates to get started
and learn more about what
CSS is and isn’t supported in email clients here.

Test, test, test

Testing your template design before sending is absolutely
crucial. Almost every email environment will render your
email differently. We recommend testing in most if not
all of the following:

Make sure you use the same details for every campaign you
send. Legally, this needs to be a valid email address and
should contain your domain. Keeping it consistent ties in
with our address book recommendation above.

Set up a small test list

On top of your main list(s), you should also add a small
test list possibly consisting of yours and some coworkers
email addresses. You also want to receive what your recipients
are receiving to ensure you know about any problems that
may arise.

4. Measure the results

Check out your opens, clicks
and unsubscribes

Measure and compare results over subsequent campaigns. Test
different subject lines and calls to action between campaigns
to learn what works and doesn’t work well.

Tweak the template and newsletter
copy based on the results

Collate your findings and make real changes to your email
design or newsletter content. If one particular topic is
by far the most popular in the link activity report, considering
leading your newsletter with that topic for each email.